The edge is near: 24 days out, the outcome is still very much up in the air.
WASHINGTON – The high stakes cat-and-mouse affair familiarly known as the fiscal cliff is rapidly approaching an end game with few clues to the final outcome.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the GOP’s lead negotiator on how to best whittle down the federal debt, has grudgingly conceded that taxes paid by those earning $250,000 and above per annum will have to rise in order to address a still-ailing economy. Boehner and his allies want to accomplish that fete without raising tax rates.
But President Obama, to this point, isn’t buying, telling the Business Roundtable on Wednesday that “it is not possible for us to raise the amount of revenue that’s required for a balanced package if all you are relying on is closing deductions and loopholes.’’
“We’re not insisting on rates just out of spite or out of any kind of partisan bickering,’’ Obama told the nation’s business leaders. “But rather because we need to raise a certain amount of revenue.’’
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is equally critical of the president’s package, thickening the fog over how a deal might ultimately emerge. Cont. Reading
